‘I was in solitary at the time. Still am.’
‘What happens when you’re not? Who’ll watch your back?’
‘We’re better prepared.’
‘We?’
‘Pays to have friends.’
‘Obviously Johnnie Gill, Bubba Noakes, Felix Nash, Freddie Coombs and Hank Patrick didn’t pay enough.’
The sneer carried exhaled smoke towards her. ‘You feds, you representatives of the Zionist Occupation Army, are all the same. You believe you can pick up intelligence from me, persuade me to snitch, penetrate to the inside?’
‘As I said, I’m making conversation.’
‘I don’t care if you manufacture fucking jelly. This.’ He twisted his hands in their cuffs to unbutton the top of his shirt and reveal the tattoo on his upper chest. ‘And this.’ The shirt sleeve was pulled up with difficulty. ‘That’s what protects you behind the wire.’
‘Glad you have such a rich inner life.’
He lay his fingers flat on the table. ‘We intend to hit back, that’s all you need to know.’
‘They’ll be expecting it.’
‘Will they? They think we’re pussies, off balance, they think we’re leaderless. They don’t know how much punishment we can take, how much we can give. Those niggers sure will be surprised.’
‘You’re outnumbered.’
‘Quality is what counts. Superiority.’ He pointed to his forehead. ‘In here.’
‘Is that what they taught you at Nazi summer camp?’
Flecks of red had appeared in the grey-blue prison complexion. It meant she had got through, gained his attention. ‘I’ve learned more ’bout ethnics, more ’bout blacks, more ’bout Jewish America, than you will ever do with your computers, your databases, your instruments of oppression, your conspiracy to sustain the weak, your profiling, your lies.’
‘Want to expand?’
‘You didn’t pick up much at Quantico, did you, Special Agent?’ He was shaking his head with mock regret.
‘I tried.’
‘Try harder, try realizing it’s all about tribalism and living space. Prison turns evolution on its head, prison’s the only place where an Afro-American is in a majority, where he thinks he can rule. So he gets beyond himself, loses perspective.’
‘And perspective is what you’re adding?’
‘Too right. A reality check, a realignment. It’s coming. The negro is out of control. He’s proved it, acting as an agent of the liberal Jewish rulers to pollute society, being used by the law to discipline us in our cells with gang-rape, to cut down the leaders of our white brethren in the penal institutions. He has provoked.’
‘While you’ve survived.’
Final draw, and the two hands descended together to mash the cigarette butt. ‘Fortunate, huh?’
‘Coincidence, or you’ve got bitches in low places.’
‘No one owns me. No one. Specially not the enemies who targeted my fellow pure Americans.’ Her comment had cut, was intended to.
‘That’s what confuses me. Your concept of purity.’
‘You’ve been round the bastardized mongrels of modern society too long.’
‘I didn’t have the advantage of chilling with you and your Nordic supermen.’
‘You don’t have the advantage. Period.’ He leant and blew the tobacco residue towards her. ‘Ash is what you’re gonna see.’
‘Why California? Why the max-security institutions here? Why not Idaho, Alabama?’
‘Relax, Special Agent. It’s not so difficult. California’s the epicentre, the first state in which whites are the minority, the state into which almost six million immigrants have flooded in twenty-five years. Next on their hit-list – Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois.’
‘You can’t beat demographics.’
‘You can beat most things if you put your mind to it. If we lose in this state, we lose everywhere, we surrender to the blacks, chicanos, the Armenians, anybody. It’s the domino-effect.’
‘Same argument got us into ’Nam.’
‘Same pink-coloured defeatism as yours, same communist, faggot-loving, gook-sympathizing, limp-dicked, Hebrew media-motherfuckers, got us out of it. And I’m speaking as a patriot and former serviceman.’
He was pumped, primed, the condition in which she wanted him. Fanatics, conspiracy-junkies, liked to talk, searched out platforms and audiences on which to practise. She would lend a willing ear, a covert microphone, plug into his stream of consciousness and racist chatter. Winnowing and analysis, the search for leads, would come later, in advanced or early hours holed up with Fletcher Wood, the office over-lit and under-aired, the ideas prolific and caffeine-fertilized. For the moment, she listened, attentive, face closed. He had a mission to convert, she to uncover. She had heard the slogans from a thousand mouths, derivative prejudice offered as sacred truths. The race hate and race relations industries – flip sides of the same currency – trading on resentment, purchasing grievance, raising the price of intolerance, banking a whole lot of trouble to come. Dirty money, and many made a living from it. She was just doing the audit.
‘Want my opinion?’ he asked. A retrospective ban was unenforceable. ‘Put a nigger in spectacles and they call him a genius. Put him in a box, I call it a start.’
‘I don’t do opinions.’
